


Object Lesson

by MooseLane



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bipolar Newton Geiszler, Drabbles, Gen, kids being sad kids, kids being silly kids, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:49:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8617561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseLane/pseuds/MooseLane
Summary: A series of drabbles, mostly pre-movie, about Newt, Hermann, and/or Mako. I may or may not add more later.





	1. Air Guitar

Ilia Geiszler does not know what to do with the child. Any child, but certainly not this one. 

"What's that?" Newt asks, prodding a slide potentiometer on the soundboard. The drums fade up too loud in Ilia's headphones. He shoos the boy's hand away. Newt pokes something else, and the vocals go off pitch. Ilia sighs. 

"Here, put on some headphones," he says, handing Newt a set far too big for his head. Newt's hair sticks up on end as he settles them in place. 

"This controls pitch," Ilia explains, readjusting a knob. "This is the fader," he sliding the controls along the board, bringing the drums back down. Newt stares at the soundboard wide-eyed.

"The music is in pieces," he whispers in awe. His momentary stillness is followed so quickly by a flurry of tiny hands across the soundboard that Newt identifies seven different instruments, calling them out in quick succession, before Ilia can fend him off again. 

"You have to keep your hands to yourself until I'm done, Newt," Ilia scolds. Newt looks at him skeptically. "If you can do that, I'll explain how everything works." 

Newt nods in acquiesce and sits on his hands, bouncing in place while leaning as far into his uncle's workspace as possible. Ilia narrates his work as he goes, tossing out bits of musical theory and sound engineering together with opinionated annotations on the riffs coming in through the headphones. 

Ilia is engrossed in the controls when Newt asks, "Why are there two guitars?"

"They're harmonizing. Playing different parts." He experimentally fades one down, then back up.

Newt scrunches his face. "They're off though. They're interrupting each other."

Ilia glances over at Newt and snorts a laugh. "A little bit, yeah. But I'm not going to get another take, so I have to work with it."

Newt jumps up and frees his hands. "Then you need to have a guitar battle!" Newt pulls all the faders down except the two guitars. Ilia turns to scold him but Newt jumps up on his chair and starts jamming on an air guitar. "Guitar battle!"

Ilia sighs and purses his lips. "All right, you're on," he declares, and fades the guitar tracks all the way up. 

When Jacob Geiszler returns home to find his brother and son engaged in a raucous air guitar jam session, sans audible music, he just shakes his head and keeps walking.


	2. Black Flag

Newt gets his first tattoo at age fourteen, buzzed on cheap beer and flashing a fake ID. The electric needle inks four black bars on his inner left bicep. It's a tribute to the band that got him into punk music, a genre that can take his grating, cracking vocals without flinching. His operatic, absentee mother would probably be horrified to listen, and the thought makes him smile.

His band is called Mary Anna Trench, a reference to his in-progress Ph.D. in biological oceanography. Their shows are not so much popular as infamous, and well known as the only band in the Cambridge scene that includes a hand-built theremin. 

He plays a show that night, high on endorphins and arm stinging and shiny with new ink. The high lasts for days, weeks, escalating precipitously before leveling off when he leaves for the WHOI campus on Cape Cod for the summer. His bandmates see him off with admonishments to calm the fuck down, and Newt grins and shouts back that they're full of shit.


	3. Groupie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for suicide ideation and brief discussion of methods

They save him, in a way. 

August 10, 2013. Newt is slumped on the bathroom floor in boxers and a t-shirt, staring at the opposite wall, stealing glances at the bottle in his hand. Cheeks wet. Eyes red. An intolerable weight crushing the whole of him. A hollow emptiness struggling against the pressure to collapse. 

Diphenhydramine should do the trick. Pass out, system failure, done. He fidgets with the bottle cap.

An emergency alert erupts from his phone, then one from the neighbor's next door. A muffled tv turns on, then shouting. Newt shuts his eyes.

Text messages ping urgently, until they are interrupted by the ring tone. The noise next door devolves into sobbing, and shouts travel up and down the hallway. Glass breaks outside.

Fucking hell. It sounds like the friggin apocalypse or something.

Newt leaves the bottle on the floor and pushes himself up to grab his phone. 

_EMERGENCY ALERT: Attack on San Fransisco, CA. Check local media -USDoD_

_LUIS: holy shit are you seeing this?<http://youtu.be/mS6kk1bTqJs>_

_DR. BULMWAR (CALL THEM BULLHORN THEY HATE IT): Geiszler, this thing came out of the Pacific--have you ever seen anything like it? [image attached]_

_ANNIE-O: where are you? I haven't seen you in days  
you didn't leave early for that conference in sf did you?_  
_dude pls let me know if you're ok_

_ANNIE-O: If you got eaten by Godzilla I will be so pissed where the hell am I going to find someone else who can play your stupid theremin guitar_

_ANNIE-O: I will fight your ghost I s2g_

_UNCLE ILIA - Voicemail_

Newt clicks the link from his graduate advisee and his jaw drops. He races from the bathroom and throws open his laptop, pulling up every news site he can find and a few of his cryptozoology boards for good measure. Godzilla, Reptilians, extant dinosaurs, leviathans, revelations. Newt's brain cycles through it all quickly, measuring each theory and proclamation against all that he knows—and he knows a lot, _obviously_ —and comes up with nothing. This is unknown. This is something new. This is something the earth has never seen before.

His phone pings again.

_ANNIE-O: I WILL GO GHOSTBUSTERS ON YOUR ASS_

_NEWT: Still in MA_

_No way my ghost could win that fight_

_ANNIE-O: where have you been dude_

_NEWT: just staying alive mostly_

_ANNIE-O: shit man  
u ok? want me to come over?_

Newt looks back at the laptop and refreshes every page, waiting for new footage.

_NEWT: no I'm good now I think_

_NEWT: thx dude_

The monsters, Kaiju they will later be called, take up residence in the hole in his chest. They give him a mystery, a challenge, something to hold onto.

So he grabs on, and doesn't let go until there's nothing left but ink on his skin and a roar in his brain. 


	4. Little Shadow

A buzz follows Mako Mori's first arrival at the Shatterdome. She is the Jaeger program's victory, a symbol of everything they are fighting to save.

But for Mako, everything has already been lost.

She seeks quiet places, in the day, in the middle of the night when nightmares interrupt her sleep. The warm, dark of the server room. The space beneath Dr. Caitlin Lightcap's desk when she is out in the jaeger hanger. The Kwoon at four in the morning. 

Deep into the night she finds herself peeking through the doorway of the K-Science lab, discovering it dimly lit and empty. She wanders in, following the wires and machinery with her eyes as it snaked across the floor, slithered up the walls, dangled from the ceiling. It is nothing so impressive as J-Tech or the jaeger hanger, as she can not see what the machinery is doing. There seems to be no product of it all. 

Mako takes her time exploring the lab, carefully following the patterned floor tiles as if it were a maze. She jumps over bundles of wires and smiles when she lands first with a small thud, then a tap, then no sound at all. She imagines the wires are rivers, the computer towers are city skyscrapers, and she stands above them all, like—

She hunches down and wraps her arms around her knees, trying not to cry. She is a big girl, she shouldn't be crying. She sniffles and wipes her nose on her sleeve. 

She wants her mom. She wants her baby sister. She wants her dad to pick her up and wrap her in his arms. She wants to live her life backward, so she can have a happy ending. 

Mako jumps when she feels a gentle hand on her back. She looks up to see a man crouched awkwardly before her, a cane resting against his shoulder and glasses hanging around his neck from a chain.

"You are Miss Mori, am I correct?" He says.

Mako nods, mostly understanding.

"I am Doctor Hermann Gottleib. Come, let's get you some tea."

He pushes himself up, gripping the cane for support, and leads her by the hand to a task chair beside an electric tea kettle. The sound reminds her of the kitchen she grew up in, and she is not sure if she wants to smile or sob. She bites her lip instead. 

Doctor Hermann Gottleib settles in front of a monitor, watching something on the screen. Mako has the sense that he is neither ignoring her nor paying her any mind. He is quiet. Mako likes this.

She pours her own tea, smelling the selection of tea bags to decide which is best. Once she makes a determination, she pours a cup for her companion and delivers it to his desk with two hands. He offers her a small smile in return.

When she knows more English, she decides, she will ask him about this lab, what they do, what could have this man up alone so late at night. Until then, she will enjoy the quiet act of trailing Doctor Hermann Gottlieb around the Shatterdome. 


End file.
